|
We come now to the purpose of all this discussion; to make
clear in what sense or to what degree Actualization is predicable
in the Intellectual Realm and whether all is in Actualization
there, each and every member of that realm being an Act, or
whether Potentiality also has place there.
Now: if there is no Matter there to harbour potentiality: if
nothing there has any future apart from its actual mode: if
nothing there generates, whether by changes or in the permanence
of its identity; if nothing goes outside of itself to give being
to what is other than itself; then, potentiality has no place
there: the Beings there possess actuality as belonging to
eternity, not to time.
Those, however, who assert Matter in the Intellectual Realm will
be asked whether the existence of that Matter does not imply the
potential there too; for even if Matter there exists in another
mode than here, every Being there will have its Matter, its form
and the union of the two [and therefore the potential, separable
from the actual]. What answer is to be made?
Simply, that even the Matter there is Idea, just as the Soul, an
Idea, is Matter to another [a higher] Being.
But relatively to that higher, the Soul is a potentiality?
No: for the Idea [to which it is Matter] is integral to the Soul
and does not look to a future; the distinction between the Soul
and its Idea is purely mental: the Idea and the Matter it
includes are conceived as a conjunction but are essentially one
Kind: remember that Aristotle makes his Fifth Body immaterial.
But surely Potentiality exists in the Soul? Surely the Soul is
potentially the living-being of this world before it has become
so? Is it not potentially musical, and everything else that it
has not been and becomes? Does not this imply potentiality even
in the Intellectual Existences?
No: the Soul is not potentially these things; it is a Power
towards them.
But after what mode does Actualization exist in the Intellectual
Realm?
Is it the Actualization of a statue, where the combination is
realized because the Form-Idea has mastered each separate
constituent of the total?
No: it is that every constituent there is a Form-Idea and, thus,
is perfect in its Being.
There is in the Intellectual Principle no progression from some
power capable of intellection to the Actuality of intellection:
such a progression would send us in search of a Prior Principle
not progressing from Power to Act; there all stands ever
realized. Potentiality requires an intervention from outside
itself to bring it to the actualization which otherwise cannot
be; but what possesses, of itself, identity unchangeable for ever
is an actualization: all the Firsts then are actualizations,
simply because eternally and of themselves they possess all that
is necessary to their completion.
This applies equally to the Soul, not to that in Matter but to
that in the Intellectual Sphere; and even that in Matter, the
Soul of Growth, is an actualization in its difference; it
possesses actually [and not, like material things, merely in
image] the Being that belongs to it.
Then, everything, in the intellectual is in actualization and so
all There is Actuality?
Why not? If that Nature is rightly said to be "Sleepless," and to
be Life and the noblest mode of Life, the noblest Activities must
be there; all then is actualization there, everything is an
Actuality, for everything is a Life, and all Place there is the
Place of Life, in the true sense the ground and spring of Soul
and of the Intellectual Principle.
|
|